Literature reviews often seem to be black boxes to doctoral students. I have been moving doctoral students away from the "gap in the literature" idea to more of a systematic literature review as a key part of the overall research methods package.
Systematic reviews began in medicine to tie together what is often a plethora of articles into a meta analysis. In the social sciences and business a systematic review demonstrates the development of a topic and line of thought/reasoning. There may be a gap in such developments or there may a trend worthy of discussion.
It is also helpful to use the modern tools of the trade such as the qualitative data analysis tools to code and present the analysis. AI is our friend here!
Thanks so much for your comments, Doug! I'm so glad you train your students on systematic reviews. I'm sure it's a much more helpful exercise. And yes, there's often so little training in grad school on how to write literature reviews. Students frequently ask for resources on how to do this well. Do you have any particular guides or resources you point your students to? I've also got a few posts coming in the near future about lit reviews in particular, so hopefully that will be helpful as well.
Interesting article popped up in some of my work with students and raises a valid point about reliabilty of literature reviews and a need for more systematic processes.
We have started emphasizing the concepts of "Evidence-based Management" (https://cebma.org). When a lit review is seen as part of the EBM cycle, it has purpose and the structure is often better suited to real-world problems.
These are great hints to write a review. I like the idea of weaving, bringing different research strands together, embedding the research question to get a broader picture about what is going on. And, I totally agree that the ‚gap-question‘ is often a bit too simple or misleading. It‘s similiar to finding something new and doing research on it (in particular in social sciences and humanities). We are (almost) always embedded, intervowen in discourses, knowledge traditions.
Thanks for the comment, Ann! I've been reviewing papers of late that seem to organize around a gap, but I'm not sure it's the best approach for the paper. I've also got a few more posts coming in the next few months about lit reviews, so stay tuned!
Literature reviews often seem to be black boxes to doctoral students. I have been moving doctoral students away from the "gap in the literature" idea to more of a systematic literature review as a key part of the overall research methods package.
Systematic reviews began in medicine to tie together what is often a plethora of articles into a meta analysis. In the social sciences and business a systematic review demonstrates the development of a topic and line of thought/reasoning. There may be a gap in such developments or there may a trend worthy of discussion.
It is also helpful to use the modern tools of the trade such as the qualitative data analysis tools to code and present the analysis. AI is our friend here!
Thanks so much for your comments, Doug! I'm so glad you train your students on systematic reviews. I'm sure it's a much more helpful exercise. And yes, there's often so little training in grad school on how to write literature reviews. Students frequently ask for resources on how to do this well. Do you have any particular guides or resources you point your students to? I've also got a few posts coming in the near future about lit reviews in particular, so hopefully that will be helpful as well.
Second reply (something I do not often do)
Interesting article popped up in some of my work with students and raises a valid point about reliabilty of literature reviews and a need for more systematic processes.
Snyder, H. (2019). Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines. Journal of Business Research, 104, 333-339. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.07.039
Thanks so much for this, Doug! Much appreciated.
We have started emphasizing the concepts of "Evidence-based Management" (https://cebma.org). When a lit review is seen as part of the EBM cycle, it has purpose and the structure is often better suited to real-world problems.
These are great hints to write a review. I like the idea of weaving, bringing different research strands together, embedding the research question to get a broader picture about what is going on. And, I totally agree that the ‚gap-question‘ is often a bit too simple or misleading. It‘s similiar to finding something new and doing research on it (in particular in social sciences and humanities). We are (almost) always embedded, intervowen in discourses, knowledge traditions.
Thanks for the comment, Ann! I've been reviewing papers of late that seem to organize around a gap, but I'm not sure it's the best approach for the paper. I've also got a few more posts coming in the next few months about lit reviews, so stay tuned!